Steve Urbon: Fairhaven demand on wind issue premature

Here's a thought: Maybe it would be helpful if NIMBYs would just come out and admit they're NIMBYs?

Here's a thought: Maybe it would be helpful if NIMBYs would just come out and admit they're NIMBYs?

Here's another: Some NIMBYs are right. Whatever it is that they're against really shouldn't be put there. Railroad. Wind turbine.

Others will simply oppose a project and throw every reason they can think of, legitimate or not, at the decision-makers.

I've spent my entire adulthood as a journalist and I've seen a lot of NIMBYs of both descriptions: the obsessed zealots and the rational opponents who can make a concise and honest case against a project.

In Fairhaven, where two turbines have been spinning for two months now, it isn't easy to distinguish between the two. It's hard to tell whether the person walking around with a 4-inch-thick notebook filled with Post-it tabs and copies of scientific reports from foreign lands is making a good case or is merely trying to snow you into capitulation.

It doesn't help that wind turbines have such complex issues, barely understood in some cases. There's flicker, for example. There's infrasound (I know it when I hear it). There's the distinctive pulsating whoosh that is like a dripping faucet in the night for some people.

These things are being blamed for seemingly everything from migraines to nervous disorders to dizziness to acne. So comprehensively impossible is the list of maladies that wind turbines must surely hold some sort of record. Yet somehow the "power of suggestion" hasn't been mentioned.

The Fairhaven Board of Health is so worried about the effects of these wind turbines that one month into their operation it ordered the developer, Sumul Shah, to come up with a list of remediation options. ("Remove turbines" should be items No. 1-100, perhaps. Would anything else make opponents happy?)

Shah is being asked to respond to 132 complaints. Rudely, in the view of town officials, Shah has answered with what is essentially a simple statement: These turbines, as of now, are fully compliant with state and local laws. Force me to do remediation now and I'll see you in court.

What really got under the skin of the Board of Health is that Shah had the temerity to observe that 42 percent of the complaints came from plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the town, seeking to remove the turbines.

Another 22.5 percent raised public objections to the project in the past.

So what we've got here is two-thirds NIMBYs. I will give the benefit of the doubt to the other third.

"This makes one question the validity of many complainants or the rationale for why people are complaining," Shah wrote.

"It is your responsibility to separate legitimate complaints, which could be related to a violation of local or state standards, from complaints which are merely a back-door attempt to implement a tiny minority opinion," he added.

Apart from possibly the "tiny minority" claim, what part of that is in error? Why is it deemed out of line to simply admit that some of the opponents are zealots on a mission who are giving thoughtful opponents a bad name?

What we know about wind turbines at this point is often lacking, no question. Falmouth should be a warning shot. And what finally all but did in Falmouth was that the turbines exceeded state noise standards. You can argue about whether the standards are adequate but it's what we're using. Excessive noise shut down a wind turbine, and we didn't need to subject everyone who complained to medical tests and research studies.

The same standard should apply in Fairhaven. Shah's turbine manufacturer gave him a noise guarantee. The state is about to start the complex process of monitoring and measuring the noise coming from these turbines. We need to see those results.

This ought to make the decision about the turbines' fate far more clear-cut than trying to placate those who are out to dismantle this project by any means necessary.

Shah is right. Remediation doesn't make sense when you don't even know what there is to remediate.

Horse, then cart.

Steve Urbon is senior correspondent for The Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday. He can be reached by email at surbon@s-t.com or by phone at 508-979-4448.